Victory and Independence

In July 1780 France's Louis XVI had sent to America an
expeditionary force of 6,000 men under the Comte Jean de
Rochambeau. In addition, the French fleet harassed British
shipping and prevented reinforcement and resupply of British
forces in Virginia by a British fleet sailing from New York City.
French and American armies and navies, totaling 18,000 men,
parried with Cornwallis all through the summer and into the fall.
Finally, on October 19, 1781, after being trapped at Yorktown
near the mouth of Chesapeake Bay, Cornwallis surrendered his army
of 8,000 British soldiers.

Although Cornwallis's defeat did not immediately end the
war -- which would drag on inconclusively for almost two more
years -- a new British government decided to pursue peace
negotiations in Paris in early 1782, with the American side
represented by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay. On
April 15, 1783, Congress approved the final treaty, and Great
Britain and its former colonies signed it on September 3. Known
as the Treaty of Paris, the peace settlement acknowledged the
independence, freedom and sovereignty of the 13 former colonies,
now states, to which Great Britain granted the territory west to
the Mississippi River, north to Canada and south to Florida,
which was returned to Spain. The fledgling colonies that Richard
Henry Lee had spoken of more than seven years before, had finally
become "free and independent states." The task of knitting
together a nation yet remained.